Chapter 5 - The Lake House
The lake house had always been Lucia’s place.
That was the first thought Raffaele hated himself for having.
Not Noah’s place. Not the family’s place.
Lucia’s.
She had chosen the cedar siding and the wide porch. She had bought chipped ceramic mugs from a roadside market because she said everything in the Long Island house was too expensive to enjoy. She had taken Noah there when he was an infant and stood barefoot in the kitchen at two in the morning while he screamed through colic.
After she died, Raffaele had stopped going.
Noah had gone with Margaret a few times in summer, never for more than a weekend.
Victoria knew that.
Which was why the word weekdays kept repeating in his head.
At four that afternoon, Luca found him in the garage with the lake-house keys in his hand.
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m driving up.”
“To the lake?”
“Yes.”
Luca looked toward the row of black SUVs. “Why?”
Raffaele unlocked one himself.
“Because I want to see what was delivered there.”
Luca frowned. “Delivered?”
“Margaret says Victoria wanted Noah staying there during the week after the wedding.”
That finally erased the business expression from Luca’s face.
“She said what?”
Raffaele opened the driver’s door.
Luca put a hand on it before he could get in.
“Raff.”
Raffaele looked at his hand.
Luca removed it.
“There are sixty people trying to reach you,” Luca said. “Half the city knows the engagement is over. Carlo wants to know if the reception venue is canceled. The mayor’s office called because you were supposed to host that dinner Thursday. And two of our contractors are already asking whether Hale’s family is pulling out of the Queens project.”
Raffaele stared at him.
“My son was being moved out of my house.”
“I heard you.”
“Then act like it.”
Luca exhaled through his nose.
“I am. But you don’t get to stop being who you are because your personal life exploded.”
There it was.
The old bargain.
Raffaele could be a father after meetings. He could grieve after obligations. He could protect Noah as long as protection did not inconvenience the machine built around his name.
For years, he had accepted that as maturity.
Now it sounded pathetic.
“Move Thursday’s dinner,” he said.
“Raff—”
“Move it.”
Luca studied him.
“You know what people will say.”
“That I canceled dinner.”
“That you’re distracted.”
“I am distracted.”
“They’ll smell weakness.”
Raffaele almost smiled.
“Then let them smell it from ninety miles away.”
He got into the SUV.
Luca stayed beside the door.
“Want me to come?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Raffaele drove without a security car for the first time in years.
The road north was wet from an afternoon storm. Traffic loosened after White Plains. By the time he turned onto the narrow county road near the lake, his phone had vibrated so many times he shut it off.
The house looked smaller than he remembered.
Its porch boards were darker from rain. Wind moved through the trees. Someone had planted white hydrangeas along the front walk.
Raffaele unlocked the door.
The kitchen smelled closed up and clean.
Nothing looked strange until he walked upstairs.
The room Noah usually used had changed.
There was a new toddler bed.
A new dresser.
A row of dinosaur decals along one wall.
A box from a children’s clothing store sat unopened near the closet.
Raffaele stood in the middle of the room.
This was not an emergency backup.
Someone had prepared for a child to live here.
He opened the closet.
Tiny hangers.
Rain boots.
Two new sweaters.
A package of pull-ups.
On the shelf sat a white-noise machine identical to the one in Noah’s nursery.
Raffaele pressed both hands against the dresser.
His first instinct was rage.
His second was worse.
He knew how this had happened.
He had signed the household spending approvals without reading the itemized purchases. He had told the estate manager that Victoria could authorize anything related to the wedding or children under twenty-five thousand dollars.
He had built the system that made removing his son convenient.
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Raffaele turned fast.
The caretaker, Henry Walsh, stood in the doorway with his cap in both hands.
“Mr. Marconi. Sorry. I saw the car.”
“How long has this room been like this?”
Henry glanced around.
“About ten days.”
“Who came?”
“A delivery crew. Then a lady from the city. Designer, I guess.”
“Victoria?”
“No, sir. Ms. Hale came once, Saturday morning.”
“With Noah?”
“No. With her daughter.”
Raffaele straightened.
“What did they do?”
Henry hesitated.
“Walked the property. Ms. Hale asked which rooms were heated in winter. Asked about the preschool in town. Asked how early the driver usually came when Margaret brought Master Noah up.”
Raffaele’s jaw tightened.
“Did she say he was moving here?”
Henry looked uncomfortable.
“She said there’d be a new routine after the wedding.”
“What routine?”
“She said the main house had too much activity for a little boy.”
Raffaele laughed without humor.
His son had lived in the main house since birth.
Henry shifted his cap from one hand to the other.
“Sir, I figured you knew.”
“Everyone figured I knew.”
The caretaker did not answer.
Raffaele walked to the window.
The lake was gray under the clouds.
“Did Sophie choose anything?” he asked.
Henry looked surprised by the question.
“The decals. She picked the dinosaurs.”
Raffaele looked at the wall.
That stopped him.
Sophie had helped decorate Noah’s exile.
Not because she understood it as exile.
Because someone had told her this would be his room.
He pictured a four-year-old choosing dinosaurs for a boy she believed would still be her brother.
The cruelty belonged to the adult plan, not the child.
Raffaele turned from the window.
“Lock the room.”
Henry nodded.
“No more deliveries without Margaret’s approval.”
“Yes, sir.”
Raffaele started toward the door, then stopped.
“No. Not Margaret’s.”
Henry waited.
“Mine.”
The old answer would have been to replace one gatekeeper with another.
Raffaele was beginning to understand that the problem was not only who had authority.
It was how much of his son’s life he had chosen not to see.
He drove back after dark.
Noah was still awake when he arrived, sitting on the kitchen island in dinosaur pajamas while Margaret cut an apple into thin slices.
Raffaele looked at the pajamas and almost laughed at the coincidence.
Noah held out a slice.
“Daddy apple?”
Raffaele took it.
“Thanks.”
Noah watched him chew.
“Lake house?”
Raffaele stopped.
Margaret’s knife paused against the cutting board.
“How do you know I went there?” he asked.
Noah kicked his heels against the cabinet.
“Vicky say I get dinosaur room.”
Raffaele put the apple down.
“When did she tell you?”
Noah shrugged the loose, complete shrug of a three-year-old.
“After wedding.”
“And how did you feel about that?”
Noah thought seriously.
“Margaret come?”
“Yes,” Margaret said softly. “She told you I would.”
Noah nodded.
“Daddy come Friday.”
Raffaele’s chest tightened.
“What?”
Noah looked at him as if the answer were obvious.
“Daddy work house. I lake house. Daddy come Friday.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Raffaele did not move.
Victoria had not only planned to relocate his son.
May you like
She had already explained the separation to him.
And Noah had believed his father agreed.
